The Viceroy, June 25-27, 9pm Bankers already depressed by the global financial meltdown may want to grab a seat at the back and keep their heads down at the Punchline Comedy Club next week. British comic Stephen Grant says the economic crisis is rich fodder for his brand of observational repartee humour.
'I'm looking forward to coming to Hong Kong because it's a finance town,' says Grant (right), who hosts the Krater Comedy Club at Komedia in the southern English seaside town of Brighton. 'They're a ripe target.'
The world's worst economic crisis since the 1930s has another upside for the comedy world too. 'Comedy thrives during a recession,' Grant says. 'People need escapism. The Marx brothers became enormous during the Great Depression.'
Grant says people are likelier to head out for laughs than to watch a tearjerker at the cinema as hard times bite. Attendance at Krater, which won the Chortle Award for best comedy club in the south for eight consecutive years from 2002 to last year, has boomed this year, he says.
'We thrive on people's misery,' deadpans Grant, who was named best comp?re last year. The comic started professional life as a software consultant and has recently signed a deal with Microsoft to write for online animation. He won't divulge any more as the work has yet to be released.
Grant, who has spent much of the past decade writing and presenting for television and radio, sees new media replacing old for comedians and other entertainers. His star rose when he featured in a television documentary about three comedians aiming to crack the comedy circuit at the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. Grant, who also made the final of an open mic competition, made a big impression and was hired to write scripts for DJs on BBC Radio 1.
